"likes" score no more?

Now, I see there are no longer any "likes" scored. If that is a policy change?

Quote from barty

I was looking for a possibility to disable it and forgot to enable it again...

What do you think? Should we offer the like system, or let users post their oppinion?

To me the "like" / "dislike" system as it just was, gives every participant an easy and fast way to make a quick "vote" on a given idea, a given piece of news, a given thread. I cannot think of any good reason to eliminate it. It helps to keep things civil as well, just as the "vote" politically tends to reduce rioting in the streets. Personally I selectively use likes if I am too busy, too lazy to write a specific response. I occasionally use dislikes for responding to meaningless but very negative posts, just to send a signal of disapproval without as much chance of starting a "flame" war. I can, and do, use the "like" later for the same individual, once they happen to begin to contribute positively in my view. I often "like" as well as post a response, to show approval that the reader can then look to see my specifics, or not, at their choice, their schedule, their whim.

The system also allows one to get a quick read on how others are thinking and on whether or not they approve of any idea, even your own. So it is like a "poll" in that sense.

When I wrote that I was "addicted" to them, it was meant in the beneficial sense, like exercise or good food.

Please return to the exact scoring of "likes" and "dislikes" you had. Thanks, Barty.

Longview

Please note my recent post suggesting a way to deal with this "entity" you rightly criticize. It involves limiting the number of repeats to the same linkout by anyone here, or the same linkout by several participants, since this "entity" could easily create a whole team of false personas. My suggestion was 2 identical linkouts are allowed, with a total of 4 in any given year. To avoid the multiple aliases, one might make the rule a bit more complex.... I guess a useful linkout could be allowed to be repeated as part of quote of a previous post here, made by an identifiably distinct responder. The judgement to be made by a moderator-- who would be able to judge whether the origin was a genuine response or just an aliased one from the "entity"-- based on terminal code information I suspect the admins see.

It is essentially a rule against using this Forum for automated advertising. So no banning, but banning of repetitive advertising....

I hope we can accomplish this end without compromising real discourse.